Interactive Player Piano Will Take Your Twitter Request for ‘Call Me Maybe’

Player pianos haven’t been tearing up the scene since the first half of the last century. But this weekend, thanks to some crafty engineering, partiers at the Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle will get to jam to one that takes request via Twitter.

In a statement, David Mikula, creative director Digital Kitchen, said the Chicago agency “brought Stanley to life to honor the independent maker spirit of the Capitol Hill neighborhood and provide a window into the talented musicians playing at the Block Party.”

The player piano was refurbished by hand (see a bit of the process in the video above). “He” is able to turn Twitter requests into music using a custom-made moderation program called Stanford. The program keeps an eye on the “at” replies from Twitter and the song queue.

Once a song is put on the list and ready to play, a reply is sent to the tweeter and a pre-made MIDI file of a Stanley-ready version of the song is loaded. From there, a MIDI interface gives the notes to a hardware controller that makes Stanley’s ivories, well, tickle themselves.

Stanley was already interacting with users on Twitter Friday morning — in one case, thanking a tweeter for requesting a Led Zeppelin song that wasn’t “Stairway to Heaven” — and is scheduled to start cranking out the hits at 3 p.m. PDT Friday. People not at the Block Party can hear their song requests played via a live stream from Stanley’s website.

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